I’m a big fan of “sparse bundle” disk images in Mac OS X. They allow me to create encrypted repositories for valuable data that can efficiently be rsync-ed between disks and don’t waste a lot of space. So I thought I’d write up a bit on what they are and how they can be used.
Waves of Storage Innovation
Waves of innovation and waves of companies, crash on the storage market, but the same incumbent leaders and product lines survive for decades. Are things changing? It’s hard to see sometimes, but real progress has been made.
Today’s Storage: Same As It Ever Was
Data storage has always been one of the most conservative areas of enterprise IT. There is little tolerance for risk, and rightly so: Storage is persistent, long-lived, and must be absolutely reliable. Lose a server or network switch and there is the potential for service disruption or transient data corruption, but lose a storage array (and thus the data on it) and there can be serious business consequences.
How To Remove Apple Music on iPhone and Mac (Mostly)
Apple Music is a new all-streaming service that is rolled out with the latest updates to iOS and iTunes, but it’s definitely not for everyone. Many people already have a streaming service of choice (I’m a Pandora subscriber) yet Apple defaults to their service every time the Music or iTunes app is opened. Thankfully, you can turn this off. Here’s how.
Faster Ethernet Gets Weird
“One size fits all” doesn’t work for Ethernet, but this proliferation of speed options sounds like trouble without automatic capability negotiation. It’s nice to have options, but the IEEE must remain focused on interoperability and rein in the interests of the various companies proposing next-generation Ethernet technologies.
